Birthdays between best friends

Each April for the past 24 years, Newport Beach resident Vivian Cellini has mailed the same yellowing, battered birthday card to her best friend, Ruth James.

And each October, James of Queen Creek, Ariz., will return the favor and send the same card back to Newport Beach, in honor of Cellini’s birthday.

Much like James’ and Cellini’s friendship, the tattered card has survived distance and the passage of time.

“This little card has gotten us through the good times and the bad times over the years — cancer, hip replacements, shoulder replacements, everything,” Cellini, 81, said Thursday, as she prepared to mail the card to James for her 85th birthday Tuesday.

Come October, when James mails it back to Cellini for her 82nd birthday, the tattered card will have traveled via snail mail 50 times, or twice a year, for the past 25 years.

“For 24 years, it’s never been misplaced or forgotten,” James said.

The card bears a faded clutch of multicolored butterflies on its front, and is held together in places with bits of disintegrating Scotch tape.

“It looks like this card has held up better than I have,” James wrote to Cellini inside the card in 2002.

The friends ran out of room to write new birthday greetings inside the card years ago — the inside and back of the card are covered with cheery notes from the past quarter-century.

Today, the card is covered with scraps of paper that Cellini and James have added to write new greetings for each passing birthday.

James’ eyesight isn’t what it use to be, so these past few years Cellini has made sure to write her birthday wishes for her friend in large, thick letters.

“I get a lot of birthday cards, but this one is the one I wait for,” Cellini said.

Both Cellini and James like to take credit for their long-running birthday tradition.

James first mailed the storied card to Cellini for her birthday in October 1985, as her dated signature in faded ink attests.

She then asked Cellini to mail it back to her for her birthday the following April.

“I thought, why keep getting another card, and another card?” James said.

Cellini, however, believes that the idea to recycle the card was hers.

“Because of the butterflies on it, I thought I should fly it back to her,” she said.

The two friends first met in 1956 when they both lived in Pomona. The two young married women lived down the street from each other and struck up a close friendship.

Cellini moved to the area from her hometown in upstate New York, and James was the first person she met in the neighborhood.

“She was the first person to come by and say, ‘Hi,’ and we hit it off,” Cellini said.

The two have been close friends since.

“We would tell each other when we had things going on in our lives,” James said. “We’d telephone each other at 2 o’clock in the morning — any time. I don’t know why, we just clicked.”

Cellini has lived in Newport Beach for the past 30 years, and James relocated to Arizona two years ago, but the friends still stay in touch and have never forgotten a birthday between them for the past two and a half decades.

“We’re very different, but we understand each other,” James said.